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home is where your lala is.

It’s official. Lala and Uncle Stephen have moved to town! It is hard to process all they’ve done, and undone, in the past four months. Besides the obvious upheaval moving one’s family across the state entails, your Lala is severely allergic to change. All who know her know this to be an undeniable fact. For example, Lala has still not been able to ‘part’ with her sticker collection. She’s been hauling around albums upon albums of stickers for 30 years…yes, 30. She has, however, finally parted ways with her straw-wrapper collection. You heard me Diddy; your crazy daisy Lala used to save the wrappers to the straws she drank her milk with at lunch in 6th grade. (Promise. Ask Nana and Papa.)

Alas, when the shit-of-all-shit hit the fan, Lala could be kept at bay no longer. Without further contemplation, she and Uncle Stephen listed their house in spring. It sold in four days. Without further ado, they began their search for a new home in the Milwaukee area. They found just the perfect one, in just the perfect neighborhood. In turn, your cousins are the new kids on the block, and they will be the new kids at school this fall. Lala will quit a job she loves, and will eventually take one she may or may not like at all. For now, she is living with a friend in Madison, and coming home on the weekends. Uncle Stephen is manning the three kids, two puppy pups – one who cannot walk, and a house in half-moved-in, full-court chaos. (Just another example of Uncle Stephen’s heart of gold…and patience of steel.)

After three sticky, icky days of packing the Madison house and then the most enormous U-haul truck known to man, the Siodlarz family set out on the final leg in their relocation to Milwaukee. Your uncle drove the U-haul, which was pulling another U-haul trailer. (A last minute, “Oh shit. Our stuff isn’t going to fit!” required an impromptu additional trailer rental.) Your Lala was driving the kids and puppy pups in the chocked full mini-van…which, for visualization purposes, was also outfitted with a very stuffed car-top carrier. (Because apparently they still make those?!?) As she made her way from the Beltline in Madison to I-94 towards Milwaukee, an unmistakable message from you emerged high in the sky. In a state of giddy disbelief Lala reached for her phone and called me. She said, “DD….guess what is staring me right in the eyes?!? The most beautiful, vibrant rainbow I’ve ever seen! I don’t know about you, but where I live, not a single drop of rain has fallen in weeks!” I couldn’t get a word in edgewise because Lala was hyperventilating in a half-laugh, half-cry. It didn’t matter. Nothing more needed to be said. We both knew it was you thanking Lala for coming to get your Momma.

A relocation of such nature would be a huge undertaking for any family. But for Lala, it is unprecedented. The realization that Lala and Uncle Stephen uprooted their family, their home, their children and their careers largely in efforts to live closer to Momma is astonishing…and humbling. The love and support they’ve provided throughout the past few years has been unwavering and steadfast. This, however, supersedes my wildest imagination…even from Lala the Wonderful.

Over the past six weeks, I travelled to places both old and new. I set out on that journey in search of peace. To be honest with you, I did not find the peace I was so desperately seeking. However, I’ve come closer to accepting that given all I’ve lost in the past year – my soul may simply never be quite the same. Perhaps the peace I’ve been seeking, the kind that once lived deep inside of me, is not meant to ever live there again. I can’t begin to imagine what the future holds, nor I’m I interested in trying to guess. For now I am channeling my energy into staying “present in the present”. In this moment, I can feel pieces of my broken heart shifting closer together. Your Lala and Uncle Stephen’s unbelievable demonstration of support is the synergy behind this shift. Even if the pieces don’t ever completely converge, I am grateful beyond measure that five very big pieces of my heart are now merely a 15-minute drive away.

Close those baby blues. Sleep sound. Worry not. We are going to be okay. You and me together…we can do anything, baby.

family. I don’t hear stories like this very often. Ones where they stand out and do whatever it takes even if their life is uprooted to help. I live in a special needs world journey and one side of our family can’t even help when needed. This is amazing and special and awesome.